Friday, November 11, 2016

Cypress Lakes Student Earns Gold With Project for Troops

In observance of Veterans Day, we thank all Girl Scouts who have done so much to those who gave so much in service to our country. Happy Veterans Day. Sarah Nguyen, a senior at Cypress Lakes High School, has earned the Girl Scout Gold Award, the highest award in Girl Scouting. The award recognizes girls in grades 9 through 12 who demonstrate extraordinary leadership through sustainable and measurable community service projects that require a minimum of 80 hours to complete. Less than five percent of Girl Scouts earn the award. To earn the award, Nguyen launched “Roping Our Soldiers From Home” a campaign to show support for military serving overseas. As part of the campaign, Nguyen produced 500 paracord survival bracelets for troops stationed at Fort Carson in Colorado waiting to be deployed overseas. The bracelets included messages of support and appreciation. The simple paracord bracelets got their name from parachute cord and can hold up to 550 pounds. The serviceman wearing the bracelet has eight feet of paracord to use in an emergency. It can be used: to secure camouflage nets to trees or vehicles, build a makeshift shelter, extend security straps or rope and haul heavy objects. It can also be used to create a harness to extract an injured person from a dangerous location, make a sling or splint, used as sewing thread to repair gear or emergency sutures to close a wound, fishing line or a trip line to secure an area. To raise money for supplies, Nguyen and her 50 volunteers, hosted a car wash at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and asked members of her parish for her donations. After receiving enough money for supplies, Nguyen order materials and prepared workshops so that volunteers could assist in making the bracelets. After completing the bracelets, her team created labels that included information about the campaign and a message of support. The bracelets were later shipped to Fort Carson.“What made me so passionate about this project was the impact that it had on our troops,” said Nguyen. “It really warmed my heart to know that the soldiers at Fort Caron would benefit from the paracord bracelets and I’m glad that we were able to show our gratitude to the troops of our country.”Nguyen will attend either New York University or the University of Texas at Austin and pursue a double major in English and criminology and minor in psychology.

According to the Girl Scout Research Institute’s (GSRI) report, The Power of the Girl Scout Gold Award: Excellence in Leadership and Life, Girl Scout Gold Award recipients receive greater lifetime benefits than their peers with regard to positive sense of self, life satisfaction, leadership, life success, community service, and civic engagement thanks to their experience in Girl Scouting, including earning their Gold Award. To learn more about this prestigious award and GSSJC Girl Scouts, visit www.gssjc.org.

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Girl Scouts of San Jacinto Council is one of the largest councils in the country, serving more than 61,000 girls and 18,000 adults in 26 southeast Texas counties. For more information, visit www.gssjc.org.

The GSSJC blog is written and edited by the Council's Marketing & Communications department. To submit you Girl Scout news for the blog, email communications@sjgs.org.

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